NOAA Climate Data Record (CDR) of SSM/I and SSMIS Microwave Brightness Temperatures, RSS Version 6 (Superseded)

*Please note: this dataset has been superseded by a newer version (see below). This version is archived offline by NOAA NCEI. Users should not obtain this version except in special cases (e.g., when reproducing previous studies that used this version).* The Special Sensor Microwave Imagers (SSM/I) are a series of six satellite radiometers that have been in operation since 1987 under the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP). The six SSM/Is (aboard F08, F10, F11, F13, F14, and F15) have a seven channel linearly polarized passive microwave radiometer that operate at frequencies of 19.36 (vertical and horizontal polarized), 22.235 (vertical polarized), 37.0 (vertical and horizontal polarized), and 85.5 GHz (vertical and horizontal polarized). The Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) Version-6 SSM/I Fundamental Climate Data Record (FCDR) dataset has incorporated all past geolocation corrections, sensor calibration (including cross-scan biases), and quality control procedures in a consistent way for the entire 24-year SSM/I brightness temperature period of record. Version-5 was relatively short lived due to subtle calibration problems that caused small spurious trends in the climate retrievals (the SSM/I record had become long enough at this point to detect such errors). The problem was due to subtle correlations in the derivation of the target factors for the F10 and F14 SSM/I. Like the Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU), some of the SSM/I exhibit errors that are correlated with the hot-load target temperatures, and we removed these errors using the target multiplier approach. Application of the solutions described herein provided the current V6 SSM/I TA and TB dataset. RSS Version-6 SSM/I FCDR data are stored as netCDF-4 files that have been internally compressed at the maximum GZIP utility level. A typical file will have a size of 6.4 megabytes.